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Taking a Look at DRM
May 5, 2008
In the past you use to be able to watch PPV movies and record them on your DVR for later viewing. You could build quite a movie collection for only $3.99 per flick. However those days of building a digital library of movies by ordering them on pay per view are about to come to an end.
Recently DirecTV added measures to its system that will make a DVR’ed (recorded on your Digital Video Recorder) PPV movie unplayable after 24 hours of watching it. Over the weekend The Satellite Dish learned that Dish Network would be putting the same measures DRM in place on May 6th.
There have been a lot of complaints about the enabling of DRM (Digital Rights Management) feature on the online forums. A lot of folks are upset at the movie industry and the satellite providers for putting in these DRM restrictions.
First off lets mention that making this move is something the satellite companies did not want to do, it is being force upon them by the movie industry. I have seen some folks online claim that both satellite companies should have stood up to the movie industry and said no. They don’t realize that if they did that then most of the content available today would soon be not available to them in the future. In order to continue bringing customers the content they desire the satellite companies must work with the content providers.
From where I sit if you look at the big picture the content providers want you to go out and buy their product, not record it in digital quality at discounted rates. I hate to say it but if you’re a fan of HD and want to see it in the best quality you will need to go out and buy it or rent it on Blu-ray. Some may opt to rent Blu-ray movies from places like Netflix, but as I gaze into my crystal ball I would not be surprised to see rental places start charging extra for Blu-ray movies.
The 24-hour restriction placed on some Pay Per View movies is really not that bad, as when you are recording it you can watch the movie. The 24-hour window does not start counting down until you start watching that recording again from your DVR.
There are ways around the DRM, you could always use your satellite receivers analog outputs to record your movies on your old fashioned VCR or even record it to an external DVD recorder.
As I gaze in to my crystal ball again I can also see that in the near future that many movies will be available on Pay-Per-View the same day they are released on DVD. At the moment features on PPV are released to PPV anywhere from 30 – 90 days after it was made available on DVD. In the long run this may be a good thing, because now before you run out and buy a DVD you can see it on PPV and then if you like the movie you can go out and buy it to add to your collection. I can’t tell you how many movies I have in my collection, which I would have never purchased if I was able to see them on PPV first.
The folks at Apple were able to show the industry that their DRM techniques work and last week the industry granted Apple permission to offer movies for download the same day they were released on DVR to its Itunes store. I believe we could see the same thing happen in the world of satellite.
So for those upset at the satellite providers and the movie industry about the addition to DRM I urge you to stop and take a look at the big picture. Maybe things are not as bad as they look.
Posted by Scott Greczkowski on May 5, 2008 | Comments (4)
